“This film represents a new level for me in both scale and form. It is the largest budget I have worked with, which allowed for a broader integration of historical and personal elements. However, unlike some of my previous works, where the documentary thread is more evident, here it is woven into the texture of the film in a more subtle and integrated way.”
Measures for a Funeral is the most extensive and ambitious of your collaborations with Deragh Campbell. What was the process like of expanding the scale of the story without losing the characteristic intimacy of your films?
The intimacy has always come from the way I prefer to work, not just the size of the production. Even though this film had a larger scope—multiple countries, orchestras, period research—I tried to ground every scene in the same personal energy that’s defined our previous collaborations. The production sent Deragh to Rome for a month to prepare, allowing her time to fully immerse herself in Audrey’s interior world, followed by two weeks of rehearsals with other members of the cast. From the outset, our producer Priscilla Galvez shaped the production around Deragh’s performance, building a schedule and environment that prioritized space for her process. We were in a different location nearly every day, yet Priscilla always made the effort to find a private, quiet space for Deragh to prepare—something that can be surprisingly rare on independent shoots.
At Deragh’s request, I brought on costume designer Mara Zigler, who approached Audrey’s wardrobe with great depth, taste, and sensitivity. She is immensely talented. Our brilliant cinematographer, Nikolay Michaylov—who had worked with Deragh on Kazik Radwanski’s films—was deeply attuned to her rhythms and brought an intuitive visual approach. Jess Hartt, our magnificent production designer, was an incredibly attentive empath, shaping Audrey’s world with a subtle understanding of character—from how she’d pack her suitcase to the emotional texture of each room. Ian Reynolds, our loyal and loving sound recordist, had also worked with Deragh before, and his grounded presence helped maintain a sense of continuity and calm throughout.
I also co-edited the film with Pablo Alvarez-Mesa, whose background in experimental nonfiction brought a fresh and fearless approach to the material. It was his first time editing a fiction feature, and his sensitivity to rhythm and tone—particularly in relation to Deragh’s performance—was invaluable. He was deeply in tune with the emotional undercurrents of the film, and his sense of intuition helped guide the edit into unexpected and resonant territory.
Even though there were many departments and creative leads I needed to respond to throughout the shoot, I always made it a priority to go to Deragh first after each take—to give feedback, to check in, and to encourage her performance. Every element of the production was built to support the emotional heart of the film. That’s where the intimacy came from: a shared commitment to care, precision, and trust—even within a much larger frame.
Throughout your filmography, you have explored the connection between the personal and the historical. Do you think Measures for a Funeral takes this exploration to a new level?
Yes, I do. This film represents a new level for me both in scale and in form. It’s the largest budget I’ve ever worked with, and that allowed for a more expansive integration of historical and personal elements. But unlike some of my earlier work, where the documentary thread is more overt, here it’s woven into the texture of the film in a quieter, more embedded way.
The presence of María Dueñas—a real violinist and prodigy who agreed to appear in the film because she believed in the resurrection of Kathleen Parlow’s history—adds another powerful layer. María is at a peak moment in her career, and her participation means the film also becomes a document of this special moment in her career. The same can be said for Melanie Scheiner, who plays Melanie, Audrey’s best friend. Melanie is my best friend in reality, and stood beside me throughout the making of the film, witnessing many of the trials I faced during production. Her presence—so close to me and so naturally embodied—makes her, too, a kind of living archive within the work.
The final performance of Opus 28 was filmed as a real, live concert at Maison Symphonique in Montreal. That sequence is documentary, and yet it blends seamlessly with the fictional world of the film. For me, that fluidity—the merging of live, real-time performance with the fictional narrative—marks a shift in my practice. It’s an evolution in how I approach history, memory, and emotional truth.
Audrey Benac seems to be caught between an obsession with her research and the need to confront her personal life. How did you work with Deragh Campbell to build this emotional tension?
Audrey is someone who finds control and purpose in archival systems, but that same impulse can become a refuge from emotional reckoning. We worked scene by scene to calibrate the weight she’s carrying and how much of it she’s willing—or able—to reveal. Grief is not linear, and when someone is in the midst of mourning, they don’t always behave in ways we expect. That’s something we wanted to hold space for: the idea that Audrey’s behavior might feel strange or even incorrect, but it’s deeply rooted in her interior state. The performance walks a fine line between detachment and vulnerability, and Deragh brought an incredible amount of nuance and life to that tension.
The performance is, in many ways, about detachment. We looked closely at Aurore Clément in Les Rendez-vous d’Anna—a film that’s all about emotional isolation and the quiet tragedy of being unable to connect. Like Anna, Audrey moves through spaces as an observer, carrying an invisible burden that makes intimacy feel unreachable. That emotional distance isn’t coldness—it’s pain, unspoken and unprocessed.
We also drew inspiration from genre cinema—particularly Lady Snowblood and Lone Wolf and Cub series. In Lady Snowblood, the protagonist Yuki becomes an asura at the beginning of the film, when her mother sends her on a revenge mission. The same dynamic is at play in Measures for a Funeral: Audrey’s mother, on her deathbed, entrusts her with the symbolic burden of the violin and a lifetime of unresolved pain. From that point on, Audrey becomes an instrument of that legacy. Her journey is not one of vengeance, but of quiet restoration—and like Yuki, she moves with purpose and restraint, carrying out a mission that isn’t entirely her own.
The film follows Audrey in her search through archives and documents. What was your own research experience like, and to what extent did it influence the structure of the film?
The research began as a kind of personal curiosity. I found Kathleen Parlow’s archives in the Edward Johnson Music Library and started piecing together her life. I never imagined it would grow into a narrative this expansive. My own process—visiting libraries, scanning documents, uncovering audio artifacts—shaped the film’s structure. It’s elliptical and associative, not linear, because that’s how archival work often unfolds. The research became both the subject of the film and the architecture of it.
Along the way, many of the real interviews I conducted found their way into the narrative. Joan, for example, from the Meldreth Historical Society, is an actual person I met during my research. And the character of Misha, Elisa’s violin teacher in the film, is based on a violinist I spent time with in St. Petersburg, named Chingiz Osmanov. These real encounters helped the world of the film take shape in a realistic, grounded and textured way.
The research itself was awe-inspiring—Kathleen Parlow had such an extraordinary career, and I often struggled with what to include or leave out. There were so many facets of her life that felt urgent to include, but ultimately I had to focus on what resonated most with the emotional arc of Audrey’s journey. Letting go of certain elements was difficult, but it was part of shaping the film’s rhythm and emotional weight.
In the film, music serves as a bridge between different eras and emotions. How did you approach composition and the use of sound to reinforce this connection?
We thought of sound as a kind of ghost—something that travels between past and present. Olivier Alary’s score traces Audrey’s inner world, while Stefana Fratila’s sound design and Lucas Prokaziuk’s mix emphasize her anxiety and disorientation. The archival audio, especially the wax cylinder recording of Parlow, acted almost like time-travel—it allowed us to collapse temporal boundaries. Sound wasn’t just atmospheric; it carried memory. It made the emotional resonance of the past physically present.
Stefana and I even visited Kathleen Parlow’s grave with an electromagnetic microphone to record the magnetic waves emanating from her resting place. Every time you hear static in the film, it’s from that recording. It became a way for us to experiment with bringing Kathleen back—giving her a space to reappear, to speak again. Ghosts apparate through sound, and it was important to stage moments in the film where she might have the opportunity to return. And I think, in her own way, she did.
Audrey carries her grandfather’s violin, a symbolic object that seems to weigh more than it should. How did you work on the relationship between objects and the emotional burden they represent?
That violin is both an heirloom and a wound. It holds all these unspoken family dynamics—legacy, resentment, talent passed down and denied. I was interested in how objects can outlast people and continue to shape lives. We treated the violin as a kind of haunted artifact, something Audrey wears like armor—much like a samurai with a sword—but it also weighs her down. The way she handles it, packs it, protects it—it’s as much about obligation as it is about reverence.
It’s hard not to spoil the unforgettable and grand finale of Measures for a Funeral, but what did it mean to you to film the performance of Halvorsen’s piece in Montreal? Was it a closing point for Audrey’s story or a doorway to new explorations?
Filming that concert at Maison Symphonique was profoundly emotional. It felt like a reward for years of quiet searching. For Audrey, it’s a ritual of closure: her mother is cremated, the violin is laid to rest, and the music—once lost—is reborn. But I also see it as an opening. That final scene doesn’t wrap things up neatly; it gestures toward a possibility. A reorientation. Audrey has recovered something, but what she does with that knowledge and newfound freedom is still unknown and might remain unwritten.
How did Deutsche Grammophon’s involvement influence the production and presentation of the concert in the film?
Their involvement and belief in our project is a tremendous gift. It elevated the performance and recording to a level that matched the emotional and historical stakes of the film. Working with Deutsche Grammophon and Yannick Nézer Séguin gave the concert a sense of permanence and reverence—it became a documented moment not just in the film, but in Parlow’s afterlife as an artist. It was a rare alignment of cinema, music, and memory. The film is a love letter to musicians after all and so I’m deeply grateful for that collaboration.
You’ve mentioned in other interviews that your films often take shape while you are editing or finishing another. Is there already an idea in motion that emerged from the process of making Measures for a Funeral?
I’m working on a few projects, but I’d like to keep them private for now. Measures for a Funeral feels like the closing of a significant chapter, and I’m still sitting with the experience of having made it. I’m incredibly grateful for everything this film has taught me, and while there are certainly ideas taking shape, I’m not quite ready to speak about the next ones just yet.
